cquirke (MVP Windows shell/user)

On Mon, 6 Aug 2007 08:43:08 +1000, "Andrew McLaren"

>As Synapse kindly pointed out, the NX bit (or technically, on Intel the XD
>bit, NX is an AMD term) was introduced in the Prescott series, approx middle
>of 2004. Williamette, Northwood, Gallatin, and Mobile Pentium 4s do not have
>a XD/NX bit. Collectively, these pre-Prescott chips constititue the
>numerical bulk of the running 32-bit Pentium IV population.

XP, and presumably Vista, do a sort of ersatz DEP where CPU lacks DEP
support - a bit like Win95 doing Plug-n-Play for devices on ISA bus,
which lacks the intelligence that PnP can leverage via PCI or PCMCIA.

How well this works (or breaks) is not knopwn to me, but it does imply
DEP settings can be a factor even where the system (including imaged
installations and reference PCs) has never seen a DEP processor.



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Proverbs Unscrolled #37
"Build it and they will come and break it"
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